As extremely high bandwidth access networks become more accessible to residential subscribers, they enable service providers of these networks to integrate voice, video, and data, thereby providing more convenience for end customers and creating new service opportunities. Due to the multi-service nature of these new services, networks need to provide additional functionalities to end customers to support integrated control of these different types of services. For instance, a user can establish multiple application sessions to download music, to watch an on demand movie, and to make phone calls to other called parties. Each of these application sessions may have different rate structure. For example, music download may be charged on a per download basis, on demand movie may be charged on a pay per view basis, and phone calls may be charged on a flat monthly rate basis.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for providing a single bill for transactions involving multiple applications in a packet network, e.g., a SoIP network.